www.chinaphonearena.com

Something that has frustrated me for awhile is signal strength on some of the chinese phones.
Some phones will have a "somewhat" strong signal but when you take out the sim and put it in another phone you get absolutely nothing for signal. Yet both phones have the same specs.

Then when I put a sim from a different carries into the non working phone, it works.
It's frustrating because I really do like a lot of the phones but it's like a gamble if the phone I buy will actually get service when it gets here.

Same with weak service. I bought a phone from a reputable wholesaler for my daughter. The phone is called a POMP W89. Great looking phone with good specs but hardly any signal strength. The sim in it is from my daughter's iphone 4s .

I just don't know if there is something I can do to improve the signal strength or not. It sucks because when the phones do this, it's not worth the time or money to ship it back to China as I live in Ontario, Canada.

Is there anything I can do as a cell phone noob to improve the signal strenth on these phones?
Thanks!

Well unless there is something wrong with the modem firmware then it is simply due to poor antenna design and/or a weak...not sure how it is in phones...amplifier? modem? something along those lines.

As far as the different carrier SIMs go it's just due to you being closer to one of the towers from the other carrier. All of the phones I have worked on have one antenna for the GSM radio so it's not like one frequency has a better antenna then the other.

All in all a firmware update might help if it's available through either the manufacturer or a custom ROM. Interestingly enough though, I just looked around a bit and people are saying that they get good reception so something might be wrong with the phone, but then again, they may just have better coverage.

In all the China phones I've owned, I've never had an issue with cell tower reception unless deep deep in the countryside. If you are having an issue, it is likely due to antenna design / placement as suggested by @pirate_freder .

Hmm. Must combinations of both I guess.
I have an older Samsung slider phone that gets great reception at my place. If I take the sim out and put it in my THL W2 I get absolutely nothing. And unless i am in a town where there is a Rogers (my carrier) antenna I basically get only 1-2 bars of service....3 on a good day. Come to think of it, I have never had full bars on that phone ever.

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A friend of mine who I got into these chinese phones bought a THL W8. Had the same problem. Could not get a signal. He sent it back to Chinavasion and had it replaced with a THL W100 and it works just fine for him.
So is there any antenna mods that can be tried with these phones? I've had the phone long enough that I don't mind trying to hack it a bit LOL

@myzee Unfortunately my antenna modding experience is limited to building a Yagi directional antenna for wifi. The only thing I can think of, short of building a new antenna, would be to wrap aluminum foil around the antenna. This is of course assuming that it can be done without causing any shorts on other electronics.